Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/715

HISTORICAL.] title, preface, and introduction, in which Van Zureu contended that the first foundations of the art were laid at Haarlem, and that it afterwards accompanied a foreigner to Mainz. In this introduction he does not mention the name of the inventor, nor a date, but points in indefinite terms to the house of the inventor as still existing. (SS) In the same year (1561) Van Zuren and Coornhert published an edition of the Officia Ciceronis, in which the latter, in a dedication to the magistracy of Haarlem, refers to the rumour that the art of printing books was invented first of all at Haarlem, and was brought to Mainz by an unfaithful servant and much improved there. He adds that very old and dignified persons had often told him, not only the family of the inventor, but also his name and sur name, and had explained the first crude way of printing, and pointed out to him the house of the first printer. (TT) In 1566 Luigi Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman who had visited the Netherlands and had resided many years at Antwerp, finished a description of the Netherlands (published in 1567), in which, alluding to Haarlem, he speaks of the invention there according to the assertions of the inhabitants, the evidence of some authors, and other remembrances; the inventor died before the perfection of his art; his servant went to Mainz, where he perfected the art, and hence the report that it was invented there. (VV) About 1568 (it is calculated) Hadrianus Junius wrote his Batavia, published at Ley den in 1588, with two prefaces, dated, the one from Leyden, 6th January 1575, the other from Delft ad annum salutis 1575. On p. 253 he says that the opinion that the forms of the letters whereby books are printed were first discovered at Mainz is very inveterate, but old and eminent inhabitants of Haarlem had assured him that they had heard from their ancestors that there lived at Haarlem, more than 128 years before, in a decent house then existing, near the market place, opposite the royal palace, Lourens (son of) Jan, surnamed Coster, who, while walking in the wood near Haarlem, began to shape beechen bark first into figures of letters, by which, reversely impressed one by one on paper, he composed one or two lines to serve as an example for the children of his son-in-law. When this succeeded, he began to contemplate greater things, and first of all invented, assisted by his son-in-law Thomas (son of) Peter, a more gluey and substantial kind of ink (as the ordinary ink was found to blot), with which he printed whole tablets with pictures, with the letters added. Junius had seen books of this kind printed by Coster (the beginnings of his labours) on the rectos of the leaves only, not on both sides; the book was written (in Dutch) by an anonymous author, and entitled Speculum Nostrx Salutis, in which care was taken that the blank versos could be pasted together, so that the blank pages should not present any unsightliness. After wards (Coster) changed the beechen characters into leaden, and the hitter again into tin ones. Very ancient wine-pots cast of the remains of these types were still to be seen in the house of Lourens, which was afterwards inhabited by his great-grandson Gerard (son of) Thomas, who had died an old man a few years before. When the new merchandise attracted purchasers everywhere, workmen were added to (Lourens's) household, among whom was a certain John (whether, as was suspected, Faust, or another of the same name, Junius did not inquire), who was bound to the work of print ing by oath. But, when he thought he knew the art of joining the letters and of casting the types, &c., he stole away, when every body had gone to church, the whole apparatus of the types and the tools prepared by his master, and hastened to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, until he arrived at Mainz, where he could remain in safety, and, having opened a work-office, issued within the space of one year, about 1442, the Doctrinall of Alexander Gallus and the Tracts of Petrus Hispanus, printed with the same types which Lourens had used at Haarlem. Junius recollects that Nicolaus Gale, his tutor, a man of firm memory and venerable old age, had told him that as a boy he had often heard a certain bookbinder Cornelis (a man of more than eighty years of age, who had been an under-workman in the same office) narrating the story of the invention (as he had heard it from his master), the polishing and increase of the crude art, &c., and cursing those nights which he had passed, during some months, with the culprit in one bed. The burgomaster Quirinus Talesius admitted to Junius that he had formerly heard nearly the same from the mouth of the same book binder. (XX) In 1628 Scriverius in his Laurecranz (see RR) placec the date of the Haarlem invention as far back as 1428, and mentioned as its inventor Lourens Janszoon, sheriff of Haarlem. He asserts that the art of printing appeared, " not in the manner as it is used now, with letters cast of lead and tin, but a book was cut leaf for leaf on wooden blocks," and the Haarlem inventor was robbed in 1440 by Johan Gutenberg. Scriverius based the date 1428 upon a Hebrew Chronicle compiled by Joseph ben Meir (born 1496, d. c. 1575), and published in 1554 at Sabionetta by Cornelius Adelkind, where, under the year of the Jewish era 5188 ( = 1428), the author mentions a book (without giving the title) printed al Venice and seen by him. Scriverius, being convinced that this could only refer to a book printed at Haarlem, applied the entry to a xylographic Biblia Paup&rum, of which he gave a description, together with several other block-books and early printed books. YY) In 1639 Boxhorn pushed the date of the Haarlem invention &amp;gt;ack to 1420, referring, as his authority, to the same Chronicle of labbi Joseph. Since that time the date of the Haarlem invention las been variously placed between 1420 and 1430.

Later testimonies are mere repetitions of earlier statemerits. We need not say much about the story of Antonio ambruzzi, who asserted that Pamfilo Castaldi in vented an printing at Feltre, in Italy, in 1456, and that Fausto Comesburgo, who lived in his house in order to learn the Italian language, learned the art from him and brought it to Mainz; this story, however, has found so much credence that in 1868 a statue was erected at Feltre in honour of Castaldi. Nor need we speak of Kuttenberg in Bohemia, where John Gutenberg is asserted to have been born and to have found the art of printing. We may also pass over Johann Fust, later on called Faust (testimonies P, T, DD, FF, II, KK, LL, 00), as we know from the Mainz law suit of 1455 (A) that he had simply assisted Gutenberg with loans of money. We may also pass over Johann Mentelin of Strasburg (testimonies NN, PP), only remarking here that he had already printed a Bible in 1460, and that he is mentioned in Strasburg registers as a chrysographer or gold- writer from 1447 to 1450; but of his whereabouts between 1450 and 1460 there is no record. That he had gone, or had been called, after 1450 by Gutenberg to Mainz has been asserted but not proved, and there is no reason why he should not be one of the two Johannes alluded to as the prothocaragmatici of Mainz in the Justinian of 1468 (testimony I.). That Nicolas Jenson came to be regarded in certain circles and for a time as the inventor of printing is owing to testimony N being misunderstood. There re main, therefore, to be considered the testimonies which bear on the rival claims of Haarlem and Mainz. The controversy between Germany and Holland was publicly started as early as 1499 by the Cologne Chronicle (testimony BB), that between the two towns mentioned not publicly before 1561 (testimony RR); while no rival inventor to Gutenberg was mentioned publicly and in print earlier than 1588 (testimony VV).

Let us first consider the claims of Germany and Mainz as centred Claims of in the person of Henne ( = Hans or Johann) Gensfleisch, called GutenGutenberg or Gudenberg, the latter name derived from his mother, berg, whose maiden name was Elsa Wyrich, who lived in the " Hof zum Gutenberg " at Mainz. He is supposed to have been born at that town about 1400. He is first mentioned in a Mainz document, dated 16th January 1430. In a document of 28th March 1430 he is spoken of as being "not in Mainz." Documents from 14th March 1434 to 18th September 1444 prove him to have been at Strasburg during that time, and documents dated respectively 17th October 1448, 6th November 1455, 21st June 1457, 10th April 1461, show that he was in or near Mainz on those days. By a decree of 17th January 1465 the archbishop of that town rewarded him for "his services," and in the bond of Dr Homery, dated 26th February 1468, he is spoken of as dead. There are, moreover, six forged documents (including some relics of an ancient press bearing the date 1441) respectively dated 24th March 1424, 1437, 3d July 1453, 20th July 1459, 19th June 1463, and an entry in an anniversarium which has been applied to Gutenberg, but does not concern him (see Hessels, Gutenberg). In former years, when printing was believed to have been invented in 1440, the records of the Strasburg lawsuit of 1439, between Gutenberg and some Strasburg artisans about certain industrial undertakings (as the art of polishing stones, the manufacture of looking-glasses), were considered to prove the invention of printing at Strasburg, not, however, by Mentelin, as had been thought by some (testimonies NN, PP), but by Gutenberg. The records came to light about 1740, just when Schoepflin, the principal discoverer, had been commissioned to search for documents of this kind. Doubts may be suggested as to their genuineness, but they have all perished, partly during the revolution of 1793 and partly during the siege of Strasburg in 1870. However, nobody would now assert that printing was invented in 1439 or at Strasburg; and those who still believe that Gutenberg was the inventor of printing refer to them only as showing that he was a mechanic as early as 1439, and that he understood the art of pressing.

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